We purchased our house last year with a furnace that was installed in 2023 which we were told had a 10 year warranty through Mckinley. Last February our furnace stopped working. We called and had an inspection done (after a few days of waiting) by the company where the tech was surprised that they had even installed that brand of furnace to begin with. There was a faulty pressure switch which they replaced for cost of inspection and labour ($300).
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, we begin getting notifications from our thermostat that there is something wrong with the humidifier (also installed at the same time by the same company). Humidity was sitting at 16% despite being set to a range of 36-40. We called McKinley again, they were able to send someone 4 days later. We were given a 2 hour window where the tech would arrive, I stayed up after a night shift. The tech arrived more than 45 minutes after the 2 hour window with no prior communication about being late from anyone. I was actually calling to cancel them when I was told on the phone that he should be on his way. Once here, the tech was again surprised that they had even installed the furnace and humidifier to begin with because it is not a usual brand for them. I asked him about the blinking light on the furnace as well, because our furnace had bin a bit louder than usual. He assured me that the blinking light means everything is good. He then said that the humidifier was completely dead and that it would be $600 for a new one or half that for repair. Despite being called for a humidifier issue, the tech didn’t bring any equipment to be able to fix things and informed us that we would have to rebook (and pay another service fee) to have it fixed if we decided to go that route. He also informed us that McKinley doesn’t transfer their warranty to new homeowners so all costs would be out of pocket, but that humidifiers aren’t covered anyway. We paid $130 for his visit to confirm that the humidifier was indeed not working. Okay, not the end of the world. We set up some standalone humidifiers for the winter and let it be.
Now here we are today, end of December, sitting beside our fireplace because our house is struggling to stay at 18 degrees without the fireplace running. Our furnace is (loudly) blowing cold air. We decided to call somebody else because we would rather give our money to a company that 1: stands behind the products they installed and doesn’t hide behind hidden clauses in their warranty, 2: doesn’t install poor quality furnaces because (as we were told) somebody mistakenly ordered the wrong thing so they offloaded the inventory, and
3: doesn’t take multiple days to show up when the heat isn’t working in the middle of winter.
Three (that we know of) pretty significant issues with an install that was done only three years ago is unacceptable. Facing the increasing likelihood of having to buy a new furnace, when we thought that purchasing a home with a fairly new furnace from a seemingly reputable company, is not a nice way to start out the 2026 budget. Unfortunately, I would recommend taking your business elsewhere.
Nate and Maddie
